Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding.

I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... It was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.

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About Me

I am a Catholic and a historian based in Oxford, where I am a member of Oriel College. My research, for a long delayed D.Phil., is a study of Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln in the second decade of the fifteenth century. I also work as a freelance tutor in History and as an independent tour guide.
I was received into the Church in 2005 and am a Brother of the External Oratory of St Philip Neri at the Oxford Oratory.

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Thursday, 4 February 2016

St Blaise

Yesterday was the feast of St Blaise, and following Mass I had the traditional blessing of my throat.

John Dillon posted an impressive selection of images of St Blaise on the Medieval Religion discussion group:

Not to be confused with his homonyms Blasius of Amorion, Blasius of
Caesarea, Blasius of Veroli, and Blasius of Verona, the thaumaturge
Blasius of Sebaste (d. circa 316, supposedly) is popularly known in
English by a French form of his name (Blaise; other European forms
include, but are certainly not limited to, Blasios / Vlasios, Vlaho /
Blaž, Blasius, Blas, and Biagio / Biase). His cult is first attested
from the sixth century, when the medical encyclopedist Aetius of Amida
reports his being invoked in cases of illness of the throat.

Absent
both from the earliest witnesses of the pseudo-Hieronymian Martyrology
and from the probably originally late fourth-century Syriac Martyrology
surviving in a manuscript written at Edessa in c. 411, and thus absent
as well from the hypothetical fourth-century Greek martyrology thought
to have provided a fund of feasts common to both, Blasius has both a
legendary pre-metaphrastic Passio (BHG 276-276c; first attested from the
eighth century) and a metaphrastic one (BHG 277); beyond these Greek
texts there are versions in Latin and in other languages. These make him
a physician of Sebaste in Armenia (now Sivas in Turkey) who is elected
bishop, goes into hiding to avoid the Licinian persecution, lives in a
cave where with the sign of the cross he cures sick animals, is sought
out, arrested and imprisoned, tends the sick, operates miracles, is
tortured, and finally is decapitated. Later versions have him flayed
with carding combs prior to execution. Blasius' miracles include saving a
boy from choking to death on a fishbone and causing a wolf to restore
to a widow a piglet that it had taken from her. In the later Middle Ages
his reputed care for ailments of the throat caused Blasius to be
numbered among the Fourteen Holy Helpers; his association with animals
made him a patron of keepers of livestock.

Since the tenth
century Blasius has been the patron saint of Dubrovnik (formerly
Ragusa), where an originally twelfth(?)-century head reliquary of him,
formed as a Byzantine crown, is kept in that city's early modern
katedrala Marijina Uznesenja (cathedral of the Assumption of the BVM):

c)
Blasius' martyrdom (three scenes) as portrayed, perhaps by Roger of
Helmarshausen, on a long side of a late eleventh- or early
twelfth-century portable altar (copper gilt over wood) executed for the
abbey of Abdinghof and now in the Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum und
Domschatzkammer in Paderborn:http://tinyurl.com/jb3gwu6

q)
Blasius (at center, betw. Sts. Eleutherius of Illyria and Hypatius [of
Gangra?]) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (between
c. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the nave of the monastery church of the
Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either
Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:http://tinyurl.com/d2mrvqk
Detail view (Blasius):http://tinyurl.com/lm44odu

r)
Blasius as portrayed in an earlier fourteenth-century (second quarter)
chiefly silver reliquary bust probably of French manufacture, formerly
in the collegiate church at Braunschweig dedicated to him (commonly
known as the Braunschweiger Dom) and now in the Bode Museum in Berlin:http://tinyurl.com/pqzvjwv

s)
Blasius (at left; at right, St. Babylas) as depicted in the earlier
fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the altar area of
the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć
in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of
Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:http://tinyurl.com/y89acds

t)
Blasius' flight from persecution as depicted in a
mid-fourteenth-century copy, from the workshop of Richard and Jeanne de
Montbaston, of the Legenda aurea in its French-language version by
Jean de Vignay (1348; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 65v):http://tinyurl.com/yzmwu82

u)
Blasius (at far right, after Sts. Spyridon the Wonderworker and Clement
of Ohrid) as depicted in the later fourteenth-century frescoes (1360s
and 1370s; restored in 1968-1970) in the church of St. Demetrius in
Marko's Monastery at Markova Sušica (near Skopje) in the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia:http://tinyurl.com/h5ancvj
Detail view (Blasius):http://tinyurl.com/zgp4cvb

v)
Blasius (at left; at right, St. Prochorus) as depicted in the later
fourteenth-century frescoes (1375) in the church of St. George in
Longanikos (Laconia administrative region):http://tinyurl.com/zfpap8g

x)
Blasius (while at prayer, attacked by a demon) as depicted in a late
fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century copy of the Legenda aurea in
its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Rennes, Bibliothèque de
Rennes Métropole, ms. 266, fol. 69v):http://tinyurl.com/hrb7yk2

y)
Blasius as portrayed holding a model of Ragusa in a fifteenth-century
silver-gilt statuette kept on the high altar of Dubrovnik's katedrala
Marijina Uznesenja:

aa)
Blasius (second from left; at far left, St. Bartholomew the Apostle) as
depicted by Masaccio in his earlier fifteenth-century San Giovenale
triptych (c. 1424/25) in the chiesa di San Pietro in Cascia di Reggello
(FI) in Tuscany:http://www.wga.hu/art/m/masaccio/z_panels/giovena1.jpg

cc)
Blasius as portrayed (at centre; at left, St. Ulrich; at right, St.
Erasmus of Formia) in the earlier fifteenth-century polychromed wooden
statues (before 1436) re-used in the central compartment of the
otherwise early sixteenth-century winged altarpiece (1517/1518; restored
c. 2000) by Jörg Lederer in the choir of the Kirche St. Blasius in
Kaufbeuren:

gg)
Scenes from Blasius' legend as depicted in a later fifteenth-century
copy of Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum historiale in its
French-language translation by Jean de Vignay (1463; Paris, BnF, ms.
Français 51, fol. 58r):http://tinyurl.com/yjmvnju

hh)
Blasius as depicted in the central panel of Martín de Soria's later
fifteenth-century San Blas Altarpiece (1464) in the iglesia de San
Salvador at Luesia (Zaragoza):

ii)
Blasius as depicted in a detached later fifteenth-century fresco (between
1475 and 1500; from the refectory of the convento di San Biagio in
Cesena [FC] in Emilia-Romagna) in that city's Pinacoteca comunale:

kk)
Blasius as depicted (at far right in the lower register above the
predella) by Carlo and Vittore Crivelli in their later fifteenth-century
polyptych of Monte San Martino (c. 1477-1480) in the chiesa di San
Martino vescovo in Monte San Martino (MC) in the Marche:

mm)
Blasius (at left, holding a candle; at right, St. John the Baptist) as
depicted by Hans Memling on a wing of his Passion (or Greverade)
Altarpiece of 1491 in the Museum für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte in
Lübeck:

nn)
Blasius (second from right, flanking the BVM; at far right, St. Roch /
Rocco) as depicted by a Tuscan follower of Neri di Bicci in a late
fifteenth-century panel painting (1498; for the abbey of Santa Maria
della Salute et San Niccolao in Buggiano [PT]), exhibited by the
Carabinieri in 2015 as part of the exposition "La memoria ritrovata" in
Cagliari:

oo)
Blasius (third from left; after St. Florus of Illyricum and St.
Nicholas of Myra and before St. Anastasia of Sirmium) as depicted in a
late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century Novgorod School wooden
triptych in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow:http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=513

pp)
Blasius (at left, holding a model of Ragusa; at right, St. Paul the
Apostle) as depicted by Nikola Božidarević / Nicholas of Ragusa in his
very early sixteenth-century triptych (c. 1501) in the Dominican
convent in Dubrovnik:

ss)
Blasius as portrayed in relief (at far right) among the Fourteen Holy
Helpers on the early sixteenth-century tomb of the Kurfürstin Anna
(1512) in the Evangelisch-lutherische Pfarrkirche St. Maria in
Heilsbronn (Lkr. Ansbach) in Bayern:http://tinyurl.com/zbdf72j

uu)
Blasius as depicted by Fermo Stella in an earlier sixteenth-century
panel painting of the Madonna between St. Blasius and St. John the
Baptist (1536) in the Museo Valtellinese di Storia e Arte in Sondrio
(VA) in Lombardy (detail view):http://www.wwmm.org/immagini/z_848.jpg